SAS versus SATA and Hardware RAID versus Software RAID

In the last few years we have made some changes to the server configurations that we either build and deploy or Tier 1 provides:

• We install SAS 10K or SAS 15K drives over SATA.
• Performance for one is vastly superior on the SAS drives.
• SAS drives are a lot more sensitive to bad sector behaviour and are better able to recover from bad data being tossed up.
• SAS drives use many forms of ECC which protects the integrity of the data.
• We install a hardware RAID controller with battery backup or SSD Cache over using the on board software RAID.
• The on board “RAID” is software driven. All RAID calculations are completed by the server’s CPU and in many cases require the software driver to rebuild or function properly – meaning we need to boot into the OS.
• We have had difficulties with on board software RAID recoveries and ShadowProtect due to driver issues.
• Hardware RAID on Chip with the battery backup or SSD Cache virtually eliminates the parity write cost of RAID 5 and greatly reduces that cost for RAID 6. SSD Cache almost renders the whole discussion moot as the most frequently requested data sits on the SSD.
• Hardware RAID controllers have the ability to mitigate the failure of a drive by keeping the server up. In our experience software RAID tends to freeze the box if a drive fails.
• Hardware RAID controllers tied to SAS drives have a much better chance of mitigating or eliminating the possibility of data corruption if sectors on an array member are dying.

Intel has a couple of resources for the above discussion as do many other RAID related vendors.

One Intel resource is the following Intel support page: Intel Server Products: Choosing between SAS vs. SATA Hard Disk for your Server RAID System.

There we find this grid that gives us a pretty good idea of some of the significant differences between SAS and SATA drives:

We are given an extensive explanation in the following document which is linked to below the above table: Intel – Enterprise-class versus Desktop-class Hard Drives (Link to PDF document download).

We put our server configurations through a lot of testing before we deploy them to client sites or within our own organization. We do this because we want to make absolutely sure that the server configuration we are going to deploy will meet the needs of our client over the life of the box which is about 36 months.

The extra cost for the hardware RAID controller, battery backup, and 15K SAS drives (not much of a cost difference between 300GB 15K SAS and Seagate Enterprise SATA these days) when taken over the life of the box (divide that cost by 36) is actually quite small relative to the performance, data protection, and overall storage stability benefits.

Tier 1 Caveat

Keep in mind that cost inferences mentioned here are for our in-house Intel server solution components. When it comes to Tier 1 the costs of some server components and server storage can be extremely high relative to components supplied in our solutions.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

Intel On-Board RAID 1 Failed Array Member Replacement Method

A system we have on our bench has some serious gremlins working in it.

We have since replaced the original 150GB Raptors with 150GB VelociRaptors, we replaced the RAM, and we replaced the motherboard.

The replacement of the Raptors and then a subsequent OS install served to really stabilize the system. There were no more spontaneous reboots happening every couple or three random hours.

But, the system would still spontaneously reboot every two or three days. We have had the full Season 2 of 24 run through the box alternating with a local radio station for good measure. All multimedia runs through Windows Media Center on Windows Vista Ultimate with a Hauppauge PCI-E multimedia card providing the radio and a Radeon HD3870 providing the DVD decoding. A SoundBlaster X-Fi rounds out the configuration.

The onboard Intel Matrix Storage BIOS would not let us replace the defective hard drive no matter what methodology we tried.

A call into Intel support provided the guidance we needed to get things working as they should.

We had to delete the RAID 1 set the last good array member was on. From there, we booted into Windows Vista and needed to start the Intel Matrix Storage Console.

In the Console, we needed to switch to advanced mode, then select Create RAID Volume from Existing Hard Drive.

We chose to create a RAID 1 array.

The next step, which is choosing the source drive for the array, is critical. Since the failed drive was on Port 0, we knew that the drive on Port 1 need to be the source drive.

Once we selected the source and destination drives we let the Migration process run. It took about 45 minutes for it to complete. We then did a reboot to make sure that the OS was still good to go.

Hopefully the flaky behaviour we have seen so far will disappear now that one of the array members has outright failed … hopefully!

We will run Season 3 of 24 through the machine, balancing that with some local radio station tunes to make sure. :)

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*All Mac on SBS posts will not be written on a Mac until we replace our now missing iMac! (previous blog post)

Windows Live Writer

Windows Vista - Intel Matrix Storage Console

We are now getting into the habit of configuring all of our workstations with RAID 1 mirroring.

We have also managed to convince our clients that the small additional cost of the extra hard disk is worth it. So, most of our client desktops are also configured with RAID 1.

We just finished configuring a Vista Ultimate system on an Intel DQ965GFEKR with two 320 GB hard disks configured as a RAID 1 array.

Here is what we see after installing the Intel Matrix Storage Console in basic mode:


And, a shot of the Advanced Mode:


The Intel Matrix Storage also pops a message up just after logging into the system indicating that the hard disks are healthy. That little message can provide reassurance that our client's data is as safe as it can be. ;)

Of course, no data storage solution is complete without backups and folder redirection for redundancy! :D

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists